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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday December 17 2017, @06:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-not-entirely-true-Mr.-President dept.

Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program

In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find. Which was how the Pentagon wanted it. For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon's C Ring, deep within the building's maze.

The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.

The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid's, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space. On CBS's "60 Minutes" in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was "absolutely convinced" that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.

Working with Mr. Bigelow's Las Vegas-based company, the program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift. Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft — including one released in August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

[...] Under Mr. Bigelow's direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft.

Article comes with attached 34s (with audio) and 1m16s (no audio) videos.

Politico's coverage of this story was published nearly simultaneously with the New York Times.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by linkdude64 on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:49PM

    by linkdude64 (5482) on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:49PM (#611058)

    This is clearly where the aliens have their HQ - why else would their offices be so deep within the complex instead of on the probably less-secure outside?
    If the aliens needed to visit their UFOs to "recharge" their gizzards, this way they would be able to access their Las-Vegas based hangars in broad daylight, as well as interview the members of the army (witnesses) who reported sightings to re-flash their brain BIOS to protect themselves from harm. It's the perfect cover.

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